1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to the electrical connector with a spacer thereof for alignment of the contact tails, and particularly to the floating type spacer with bumps on the bottom surface thereof.
2. The Related Art
The spacer is designedly used in the electrical connector for alignment of the contact tails so that the tips of the contact tails can be correctly inserted into the corresponding holes in the PC board on which the connector is mounted. As disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,601,438 and 5,709,556, each of most spacers used with the connectors includes the plate with several through-holes therein and fastened to the connector housing by means of retaining latch devices generally positioned at two ends of the plate. For some connectors, the dimension thereof is small and either the housing or the spacer is so tiny and/or thin, needless to say the retaining latch devices on the spacer as well. Thus, it is understood that such tiny structures of either the housing or the spacer/latch devices, tend to be broken under some improper impacts during transportation. Once the latch device is damaged, the spacer may be tilted under the condition that one end is well latched to the housing while the other end is cracked and loses its true position with regard to the housing. Understandably, the tilted spacer causes wrong positions of the tips of the contact tails.
Additionally, the latch devices are generally provided at two ends of the spacer. For the general spacer whose dimensions are not so small, this structure is acceptable. Differently, for a thinner and slender spacer, the application of the traditional spacer having the latch devices at two ends may performs as a beam having two simple supports at two opposite ends from a mechanical viewpoint, and thus the middle portion of the plate may be somewhat deflected downward due to either the gravity thereof or the tolerance between the spacer and the housing.
Therefore, to a thinner and slender spacer, it is improper to use the traditional fixed device for combine the housing and the spacer. An object of the invention is to provide a floating spacer for use with the connector housing, which can generally maintain a horizontal manner with regard to the housing and hold the contact tails in true positions.
Additionally, the floating spacer may closely positioned on the PC board due to gravity when the connector is mounted on the PC board, thus resulting in difficulties to remove the cleaning solution between the bottom surface of the spacer and the top surface of the PC board during the soldering procedure, due to surface tension of the cleaning solution. Therefore, another object of the invention is to provide a device of the spacer to maintain a space between the bottom surface of the spacer and the top surface of the PC board on which the connector is mounted.